| eyescratch on Sun, 9 Jun 2002 10:34:13 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| <nettime> !n.dze.sp!r!t.ov.bowie. |
[ -- here's an article and a plug that might just make it --
-- for its content, subvert!ng the hacker aesthetic --
-- SUNDAYS we are streaming the SHARE NET.JAM --
-- tune in @ HttP://www.t0.or.at/~eyescratch/share --
-- 13:00 -04 to 21:30 -04 (that's EST) New York --
-- we are open to collaborations with other streaming venues --
-- as we did last week vienna/new york, lemme know -- es ]
New York Times
Arts & Leisure
June 9, 2002
David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
By JON PARELES
IN a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Gerry Leonard seemed to be noodling
on his guitar as the rest of David Bowie's band waited. He played
some sustained notes and a bit of minor-key arpeggio; he worked his
effects pedals, adding echoes. A digital stutter entered the pattern,
and suddenly the music gelled into "Sunday," the song that opens Mr.
Bowie's new album, "Heathen," which will be released on Tuesday.
Chords from a phantom chorus wafted from a keyboard, and Mr.
Bowie intoned: "It's the beginning of an end, and nothing has
changed. Everything has changed."
Mr. Bowie sang somberly about searching for signs of life, about
fear and hope. At the end of the song, he shivered like someone
coming out of a trance. "Ahhh," he said and grinned. "Good morning!"
It was just after 11 a.m. and Mr. Bowie, 55, had already worked out
at the gym and given an extended interview before starting the day's
rehearsal for his summer tour.
Lean and affable, he was wearing a skintight gray T-shirt and
stylishly understated gray pants. His gaze, with different-colored
eyes because of a childhood accident that paralyzed his left pupil,
has grown less disconcerting; he laughs easily. When asked what he
considered the central point of his work, he said, "I write about
misery" and chuckled.
Visions of cataclysm and professional aplomb: that's Mr. Bowie's
life in his fourth decade as a rock star. One of rock's most astute
conceptualists since the 1960's, he has toyed with the possibilities
of his star persona, turned concerts into theater and fashion
spectacles, and periodically recharged his songs with punk,
electronics and dance rhythms. Now he has emerged as one of rock's
smartest entrepreneurs.
"Heathen" is the first album from Mr. Bowie's own recording
company, Iso, which has major-label distribution through Sony. In
1997, he sold $55 million of Bowie Bonds backed by his song
royalties; the next year, he founded the technology company Ultrastar
and his own Internet service provider-cum-fan club, Bowienet
(davidbowie.com). In a nod to his art-school background, his
bowieart.com sells promising students' work without the high
commissions of terrestrial galleries.
His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label
started and watches the Internet's effect on careers. "I don't even
know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I
don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems
in the same way," he said. "The absolute transformation of everything
that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and
nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in
pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that
copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and
authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
"Music itself is going to become like running water or
electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these
last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again.
You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's
really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's
terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you
think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen."
With his wife, Iman, he has a 22-month-old daughter, Alexandria,
for whom he's keeping to a minimum his time away from home in
Manhattan. When Mr. Bowie signed on as a headliner for Moby's
Area:Two tour this summer, he made sure the schedule allowed him to
return home between each of the six East Coast dates. He is also
organizing, and performing at, Meltdown, a contemporary music, film
and visual arts festival in London. (One songwriter he booked is
Norman Carl Odam, known as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, from whom
he took Ziggy Stardust's last name in the 1970's; on "Heathen," he
sings the Cowboy's "Gemini Spacecraft," about an astronaut obsessed
with a girl he left behind.)
Mr. Bowie no longer expects to compete with performers in their
20's. "I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable," he said. "You get
to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to
get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines,
you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get
played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth."
HIS fans among musicians, including Moby and Nine Inch Nails,
have toured with Mr. Bowie, introducing him to a younger generation.
Back in 1990, Mr. Bowie tried to jettison his past. He billed an
arena tour as the last time he would play his old hits. "I really did
think I meant that," he said. "I got quite a way into the 90's before
I started thinking, 'Well, if you want an audience, David, you may
want to consider putting some songs into your sets that they've
actually heard.' Yes, I know, I went back on my word completely and
absolutely."
He's now more comfortable riffling through his huge body of
work. This week, the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and
Los Angeles, opened "Sound + Vision," a retrospective of Mr. Bowie on
video that continues through Sept. 15. A restored version of "Ziggy
Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," the D. A. Pennebaker documentary
of the 1972 tour that defined glam-rock, will be released on July 10.
"Heathen" was produced by Tony Visconti, who last collaborated
with Mr. Bowie on his 1980 album, "Scary Monsters." He worked on most
of Mr. Bowie's 1970's albums, including the celebrated Berlin trilogy
of "Low," " '<Heroes' " and "Lodger," on which Mr. Bowie and Brian
Eno greeted the punk upheaval with their own merger of the
experimental and the visceral.
On "Heathen," Mr. Bowie knowingly hints at his past. He echoes
the song " 'Heroes' " in "Slow Burn," which wonders, "Who are we in
times such as these?" He revives analog keyboard sounds like that of
the Stylophone, a miniature electric organ played with a stylus that
was heard on "Space Oddity" in 1969 and reappears in the new "Slip
Away." When Mr. Bowie starts his tour with a show for fan-club
members at Roseland on Tuesday, he plans to play all 12 songs on
"Heathen," followed by all of "Low." Hearing the music 25 years later
"makes the hairs on my arm stand up," he said.
To make "Low," Mr. Bowie recalled: "I had brought the idea of
having fundamentally an R & B rhythm section working against this new
zeitgeist of electronic ambience that was happening in Germany. It
was terribly exciting to know that one had stumbled across something
which was truly innovative.
"At that time, I was vacillating badly between euphoria and
incredible depression. Berlin was at that time not the most beautiful
city of the world, and my mental condition certainly matched it. I
was abusing myself so badly. My subtext to the whole thing is that
I'm so desperately unhappy, but I've got to pull through because I
can't keep living like this. There's actually a real optimism about
the music. In its poignancy there is, shining through under there
somewhere, the feeling that it will be all right."
Drug problems are long behind him, Mr. Bowie said. He now
hesitates to take even an Advil because. "I have such an addictive
personality," he said.
Making "Heathen," he and Mr. Visconti were leery of nostalgia.
"One thing we haven't tried to be is cutting edge," Mr. Bowie said.
"The other thing we've tried not to do is to delve too far into the
past and rely on our known strengths, our known previous work. We do
know, between us, how to landscape a song and give it a real place,
an identity and a character. I guess that's the vestiges of the more
theatrical things."
The album starts with "Sunday" and ends with its title song,
both hushed and haunted by mortality. In "Heathen," Mr. Bowie sings,
"Still on the skyline, sky made of glass/ Made for a real world, all
things must pass." The album was written before Sept. 11, however,
and the songs join a long line of Mr. Bowie's apocalyptic scenarios.
"I hope that a writer does have these antennae that pick up on
low-level anxiety and all those Don DeLillo resonances within our
culture," he said. "But I don't want to say that it was in any way
trying to suggest that it was going to happen. It's not like it's
something new to me. These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I
manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You
make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that."
Between his own ruminations, he borrows "Gemini Spacecraft," the
Pixies' "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You"; in
songs like "Afraid" and "I Would Be Your Slave," he sings about love,
insecurity and transience.
"I tried to make a checklist of what exactly the album is about
and abandonment was in there, isolation," he said. "And I thought,
well, nothing's changed much. At 55, I don't really think it's going
to change very much. As you get older, the questions come down to
about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got
left?
"When it's taken that nakedly, these are my subjects. And it's
like, well, how many times can you do this? And I tell myself,
actually, over and over again. The problem would be if I was too
self-confident and actually came up with resolutions for these
questions. But I think they're such huge unanswerable questions that
it's just me posing them, again and again."--
Web Site: http://davidbowie.com
Web Site: http://bowieart.com
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
David Bowie's new album is on his own label.
--
``` <0B@@$ggG%3^`
`C%%G%%3Vg@@$gG00G/%8g8^
:C8888Gg83VC3G0@@@@@@88%80G8GV
(@@$Gg88%CCCGg$BB00@@@@@$8Gg$0B0$@0
X0@@0BBB00ggg8G8$$B0gg08$@@@$8g0000$$C`
($00@BBg000gB0B$0880BB0$$@@@@@@gGggg0B$G
<@@$$$g000000$@$$0000B00$$%$@@@@@g$$0g0$$8
X@@@B$$$$@@@@@@$0B$$BBBB0( ^VGB$B$@@@@$$@(^
G@@$$0B$@@@@@@BBBB@@@@@0B8` `/B@@@@@@@$@G%^%3
<@@@$BB$@@@@@$@@@@@@@@@@$BC X$@@@@@@@@$8g@$
^B@$$$B@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@BC `VgB@@@@@@$@@@^
~@$0$@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@$0C. </GB$@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@XC` ^8gG@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@$@B/(3G0$BGCX` ~8$g88/$@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@3. V8G80@@@08/<` ^(33< g@@0
@@$$@@@@@@@@@@@@@@$` <^` ^(<<<^ ^^^~ <VV g@@^
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@$8 ^.` (<V@@$((<` ^VCX^@@$.C@0`
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@0` `^~gB%<X@@@/ << /( @V
(@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@0^ ^< ^
%@@@@@@@@@@@@@@V `
.@@@@@@@@@@@@@%`^ >Yes, i like it!
B@@@@@@@@@@0(.^^` ^^
:$@@@$$0$@V< .^^^.. ^</XX$0<(8%
3@@@@3%%^` ^^^`.` ^ :3G@0C/G3
`@@@@@@ ` `^^ `^~<` `.
$@@@@@^ ` `^<<.```^` <VV<<XV^
0@@@@@B`````` ^<^^`^<C@@@@$@@@@@$8:^
/@@@@@@C`~~.`` `~~`.<X0g0BB0GCX/^^^^
<@@@@8`(/<<((^^^.^``^^<XV3G3GC< ~^
`0@$3 <///((((^^^`^~^^<<(/(<^`^^
` `^((<//(/(<<<^ `^^^<</:
` `^<//(((<<//////XXV33/
3X^ `^///XC33333CC3CCVV^`
^:///(/(//^ ^~<(/VC%%%33CV/` ``/X
`<(((((:((((/VVCVVCC//^^<:(((((<^^ V%<^
(((<<<<<<<:::(((((////C3CVVC3X////////((<<::<`
N!C3 S!MULC4ST STR34M!!! hTTp://share.ffem.org
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net